I brought it because Theodore’s death had put Garrett, for the first time in ten years, standing still in front of me — and because some truths, even ones you’ve made your peace with, deserve to be spoken plainly, once, out loud, before witnesses, so that the lie can never again be told as though no one ever contradicted it.

Not for my sake.

For the record.

For my children.

And, in a way I only understood at the graveside, for the kind old man in the box, who had always known.

Chapter 9 — Ten Minutes

Ten years earlier, Garrett had given me ten minutes.

That was the whole of it — ten minutes, in the foyer of the house I had thought was my home, to defend myself against an accusation that had already hardened, in his family’s mouths, into settled fact.